For nearly three centuries, Cuba’s economy was based on a single crop—sugar cane. After Fidel Castro’s Revolution of 1959, despite serious attempts at diversification, the country continued to depend on the monocrop. Men and women cut cane by hand. City people who had never swung a machete spent long volunteer hours aiding the national effort. But the US embargo and diminishing international markets destroyed Cuba’s economy. Gaudencio Rodríguez Santana’s The National Economy explores that collapse and its physical, emotional and psychic consequences. It is a powerful, insightful collection of eye-witness poems by one of Cuba’s most celebrated contemporary poets.